Mageborn 05 The Final Redemption

by Michael G. Manning

  The ex-dragon raised one red eyebrow, but didn’t comment. He had explained their differences once already.

  I watched them start to draw away, preparing to leave. Millicenth was changing shape, to become some sort of graceful bird, except on an entirely different size scale. I could feel their urgency, but Penny held back.

  Go dammitt! I cursed silently. Contrary as usual, she came closer. I struggled to speak, but in my distraction Brexus had taken control. My voice was no longer my own.

  “We need to make haste, Countess,” said Gareth warningly.

  She held up her hand, “Just a minute. Give me that. Let me say goodbye.” The look on her face frightened me. She was about to do something stupid.

  Somebody put her on the damn bird and get her away! I swore at them.

  My lips parted without my wishing it and a word emerged, “Penny.”

  She was kneeling beside me now with a face that made me wish I was truly dead. No man should see that. Her lips and cheeks were contorted with grief and her eyes were grotesquely swollen. Her shoulders were contorting with suppressed emotion.

  I had never seen her look so perfectly ugly in my life. Her nose alone was… well it might have made me shudder if I’d been alive.

  Somehow, despite the mucus and the retching sobs, she was still the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I would have given anything to hold her once more.

  And so you shall, came Brexus’ thoughts. Even knowing they weren’t my thoughts, it still felt odd. Even in my own mind, he sounded exactly like me.

  “Penny, help me,” he told her.

  Inside I raged at him, What are you doing?! She has to leave.

  “I can’t do it, Mort,” she said quietly, pitching her voice beneath the hearing range of her companions. “I watched it with Rose and Dorian. I can’t leave you.”

  Yes, yes you can! I shouted at her mentally, but naturally she couldn’t hear me.

  “Don’t,” said my treacherous other self. “I have an idea.”

  She still thought she was speaking to me. I was livid, shaking and furious to the core of my being.

  Penny’s eyes changed, as hope flickered again.

  “I need your love,” my bastard doppelganger told her. “I need a little more power to do this.”

  “To do what?” she whispered. I could feel her breath on my face.

  “I can save the children,” he told her heartlessly, playing on her most vulnerable emotions.

  Until that moment in my life, I had only thought I understood the depths that hate can reach, but in that place I discovered its fathomless extent. I hated myself, my other self, in a way that was beyond comprehension.

  “How?” she said, glancing back to make sure the others hadn’t gotten close enough to hear.

  “I just need enough strength to stand, to restore my body. One person would be enough, but…,” he stopped dramatically, letting the sentence finish itself.

  Walter coughed. “We have to go, Penelope. I’m sorry, but we’ve taken too long,” he said delicately.

  “We need to go now!” restated Gareth in a much louder voice.

  Penny’s eyes searched mine, seeing all the feverish intensity that my demon-birthed twin could put in them. “Only you, Mordecai, I’ve never loved another—only you,” she said urgently, and then she kissed me.

  YES! Brexus was elated. The sick bastard had been fantasizing about this since he first thought of my wife. Her aythar entered my mouth with a sweet taste that reminded me of nothing else. The demon was drawing it out, but not as quickly as he could. In the past he had killed men within less than a second, but he took his time now.

  I could feel her love radiating through me, like a beacon calling to my soul. I cried and rejoiced as our spirits touched again, hating myself for the comfort it gave me to feel her again.

  I love you, she said through the bars of my spellwoven cage.

  And then I realized what was happening.

  My alter-ego was funneling her aythar directly to me. Using his meager strength, he was warping the cage, trying to let her life, her love, her aythar—reach me.

  Pulling gently, Brexus drained my wife until the flame that warmed her flesh was flickering in the cold, and he gave all that he received to me. At the end, I thought her flame would expire, but he stopped, severing the connection.

  Unconscious, Penny’s near lifeless form collapsed over my body then, and a shout went up from the others. Leaping forward, Gareth pulled her away from me.

  “Foolish woman!” he shouted. “What has she done?”

  Walter was stunned motionless, but the two gods didn’t seem concerned.

  “We can carry her,” said Doron.

  The Lady of the Evening Star nodded, “She’s still alive. I will care for her.”

  Trapped in my body, I heard something then, something I hadn’t heard in a while—the voice of the earth.

  Talk to your friends, Brexus told me. My lips were my own again.

  Why? I asked him.

  I love her too. It was a gift, he answered.

  The heart of the world beat strongly beneath me.

  “Gareth,” I said suddenly, struggling to sit up. My body was thoroughly dead. It was like trying to control a marionette. Thankfully, Brexus helped, he had had a lot more experience at it. I realized then that he was also considerably weaker than I was. He had absorbed none of the aythar Penny had given us.

  Gareth Gaelyn looked at me with a profound intensity. My apparent assault on Penny had angered him, but he wasn’t sure why I hadn’t finished her. “What?”

  “I can hear the earth again,” I said simply.

  “How will that help you?”

  “Don’t leave. I have an idea. If it doesn’t work you can escape later,” I said nodding at Walter.

  “We have little choice now,” he stated bluntly. “She delayed us too long.” Gathering Penny into his arms, he stepped back toward the others and vanished.

  Chapter 45

  Standing proved to be too difficult, so I opted to sit on the stone. Funeral bier, I thought absently. Mal’goroth was coming to me anyway. Since he was the one with all the strength, he could do all the walking too.

  As I sat, I enjoyed the air. It was my first time to experience it first-hand in a long time. My sense of touch was badly skewed, but anything was better than the emptiness inside my cage. Brexus was still weak, and with my new strength, meager as it was, I could sample everything around me directly.

  It would have been a nice time for birdsong, but some bastard had blown all the trees down and scared them away.

  My apologies, came Brexus’ thought in my mind.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I replied generously. “What you did was extremely clever. It was Mal’goroth who tore all this up.”

  Most of it happened when the stasis enchantment broke, he reminded me.

  “You remember it your way, I’ll remember it mine,” I said firmly. “I’ll blame him for all of it.”

  Fair enough, he agreed. Those diamond cubes were the work of genius. Your crafting skills are without compare.

  Since I had created them while still alive, I realized that it meant I shared the guilt for the destruction they had caused, but I decided not to dwell on it. My other self was kind enough to stick to the positive, thankfully. I wasn’t very happy with what you did with them in Albamarl, I replied with a strong sense of reprimand.

  I have an anger problem, admitted Brexus.

  “Well, I’ll probably have nightmares over that for the rest of my life,” I shot back.

  Somehow, I’m not too worried about that, he responded with a sarcastic air.

  “I suppose you’re right,” I agreed, stifling a laugh, “if Peter ever gets around to keeping his promise.”

  He will, said Brexus.

  “You know him well, to be so certain,” I conceded.

  As well as you.

  “You really have lost your mind, haven’t you?” said Mal’goroth.


  I had felt his arrival long before he got close enough to speak, so I wasn’t startled in the least. “I prefer to think that I have gained an extra one,” I retorted cleverly. Of course he didn’t quite get the joke.

  That was funny, Brexus assured me.

  “Thank you,” I responded. At least you understand me, I added silently.

  Mal’goroth watched me carefully. “I did not expect to see you moving so soon,” he commented. “Did someone try to help you?”

  I had expected that question. It was the one I worried about the most. If my over-endowed enemy decided to start banging his club looking for my friends he could easily kill them. They were far too close. I absently flipped a stone in his direction. I had picked it up only a few minutes before.

  ”You still underestimate human enchanting,” I lectured him. “I had a contingency designed to restore some of my strength in the event I lost.”

  “That?” he asked, raising one eyebrow as he glanced at the stone.

  “I didn’t have a lot of time,” I said truthfully.

  “A clever idea nonetheless,” he said, complimenting me, “though it wasn’t very effective.”

  “You saw the stone,” I responded. “I didn’t have much to work with.”

  If this ever happens again, you should do something like that, commented Brexus.

  He was right of course. As so often happened, some of my brightest ideas only emerged when I was making things up. Lying seemed to inspire my creativity.

  “You’ll have to suffer for it, of course,” said Mal’goroth coldly. “I haven’t finished punishing you yet.”

  “You might want to reconsider,” I told him calmly. “The last treatment nearly unhinged me. Do it again and I might not be able to help you.” I tapped my skull with one finger.

  “Help me?” he asked incredulously, and then he began to laugh.

  The difference in our strength was beyond comparison. My offer seemed as ridiculous to him as if an ant had tried to offer assistance to the sun. His laughter rang out long and loud.

  I didn’t interrupt, preferring to wait for him to wind down. When he had finished, he stared at me again.

  “What could I possibly have to gain from you that I have not already taken?” he asked.

  “A way out,” I answered.

  “Of what?”

  “This,” I said, gesturing around me with my hands, “All of it.”

  His eyes flickered with anger, “You think to mock me? If there were any way to escape this eternal coil, your ancestor destroyed it along with the rest of the She’Har two thousand years ago.”

  “They have returned,” I reminded him.

  “Tennick was a human,” said Mal’goroth, almost spitting in his irritation, “and the loshti that he stole was of the Illeniel grove. They knew nothing of my making.”

  I started to speak, but his will pinned me in place like an invisible hand.

  “Do not mention Lyralliantha. She was an ignorant child. She could not possibly know the key to my binding.” His rage was around me like a tangible force.

  Unable to do much else, I lifted one eyebrow. After a moment he released me, curious even in his fury. “What?!”

  “You assume I’m talking about your people. Yet you have not even considered human enchanting,” I said, without an ounce of guile in my voice.

  His gaze went to the stone I had tossed at him a minute before, indicating his train of thought to me without words. He was probably also remembering the battle we had just had, and I doubted anyone had ever frustrated him so completely for so long.

  You’re starting to wonder, aren’t you? I guessed quietly.

  Of course he is, said Brexus.

  Don’t interrupt, I told him quickly.

  Sorry.

  “If you are lying…” began my enemy threateningly.

  “You’ll carry on with torturing me for all eternity,” I said impatiently. “You’ve mentioned that a few times now.”

  “How would you do this?” he asked, taken in by my offer.

  Help me walk, I asked Brexus, and he graciously guided my legs as I rose to walk closer to Mal’goroth. Nothing would spoil my ruse as quickly as being so poorly coordinated that I fell taking a few steps.

  Striding confidently toward him I replied, “I won’t lie to you. I have an idea, but I cannot be sure it will work. Your spellweaving is far different from what I understand.” It was probably the most honest thing I had told him thus far, but I counterbalanced the truth with a look of absolute confidence in my eyes.

  He sneered, “You will fail.”

  “Then you have your other entertainments,” I assured him.

  “Try what you will,” he ordered.

  “You’ll have to relax for a moment. Don’t push me away,” I cautioned. “I have to be able to see your core, the spellweave at the center.”

  Absolutely fearless, he let me close until we were face to face, and then his body opened, peeling away to display the place that held him bound, locked forever to an unwanted existence. Thousands of years had taught him nothing could affect it, and the very concept of true death drew him in a way that no living being could understand.

  “If you succeed, the power within me will destroy the world,” he said, leering. It was obviously a pleasant thought for him.

  I had already considered that, though, “I am well aware.” Reaching forward with my hand, I touched the spellweave that bound him and closed my eyes.

  The biggest part of my lie had been that I would use enchanting. While it was likely possible to do what I had suggested, it would require the same knowledge that I lacked, namely the key. There would probably have been a host of other problems as well, but that wasn’t my concern. I was using an entirely different ability.

  With Penny’s aythar and Brexus’ assistance, I had temporarily regained the ability to perceive the world directly, and my perception was what truly made me an archmage. Opening my mind I listened to Mal’goroth, engrossing myself with his core essence in much the same way that I had done with Thillmarius.

  That was the reason for my confidence. I had done this once before. It was the reason for my current condition.

  The world faded around me as we resonated together. My soul changed for a moment matching his, and the two slid together while at the same time the spellweavings within us reacted and finally fused. For a split second we were a hybrid being, but then we were one.

  An archmage does not use power; he becomes that which he seeks to use.

  I had become my enemy, assuming his mantle and power. The aythar now at my command was inconceivable, but I had bigger problems. Just as before, the power strengthened the prison, and I lost contact with the outer world. Mal’goroth and I separated again, and I was trapped, lost in a void of darkness within a dark god.

  But Brexus was not.

  A being of pure thought, a construct, like Mal’goroth in many respects, he existed as a function of the spellweave itself. As the two merged, he began to fight for control.

  Their battle went on for what seemed to be ages for them, but in the exterior world it finished in the blink of an eye. I heard Brexus’ voice ring out as he spoke commandingly to my friends.

  “Reveal yourselves,” he ordered. “There is little time.” My alter-ego sounded different now, more pompous. He had probably picked up a lot of our enemy’s mannerisms.

  I liked to think that I knew he would win, but I hadn’t been certain. My only reassurance had been that if Brexus was truly like me, he had to be far smarter than Mal’goroth. It had probably been an arrogant assumption, but sometimes it was all that I had to work with.

  Gareth and the others didn’t appear. They were far too sensible to come out of hiding simply because Mal’goroth had told them to.

  Brexus was in no mood to wait, however. Shouting the words that commanded their bindings, he called Millicenth and Doron to him. Walter’s shield hadn’t been made to stop sound, and soon enough they were stepping forw
ard. The two wizards and Penny stayed hidden, though.

  My isolation was complete now.

  The effect of over forty Celiors of aythar on the spellweave that contained me had been to make it impregnable. My only source of information now was that allowed to me by listening directly to Brexus’ thoughts. I wasn’t sure if he could hear mine in return either.

  Nor was I sure he was reliable.

  He had surprised me before, with Penny, demonstrating that he was almost as much ‘me’, as I was. Now though, I couldn’t be sure. My merger with Mal’goroth had nearly destroyed my identity. If not for the re-establishment of my magical prison, I was worried I might have been more him than me.

  Brexus had taken the blow for me in a sense. He actually was the spellweave that imprisoned me, just as Mal’goroth had been the one that had created him originally. Now that the two had merged…

  I was a bit worried.

  Throwing his head back, Brexus/Mal’goroth screamed at the heavens, “I am ALIVE, Mordecai. Deliver on your promise, or I will make good on mine!”

  Flanked by Doron and Millicenth, who were now bound to obedience, I couldn’t help but believe him.

  In his mind Brexus responded to a question from Millicenth. She was confused by his actions somehow.

  ”I am feeding you my power,” he told them. “You will keep it in my stead, until I call for it again. If I am still alive after an hour, or if I cannot call for it, you will use it to bring an end to this world. Do you understand?”

  A second later I heard the memory of her response, although I couldn’t hear her directly. “I would love nothing better,” she had replied with a chilling tone.

  Doron’s response was even more enthusiastic.

  Since binding the Shining Gods to my will, it had been almost easy to forget their true motivations. They had been created as slaves, and they hated humankind for it. Like Mal’goroth, the only thing they truly desired, more than an end, was revenge. Having experienced the world from their perspective, I couldn’t really blame them.

  What are you waiting for, Peter? I wondered. Kill me.

  I did all I could, came Brexus’ thought, directed at me now.

  Are you still in control? I asked.